Charles Lee elected to the Royal Society of Canada

This recognition by the Society is its highest honor in the academic fields of arts, social sciences, humanities and sciences.

(Farmington, Conn. - Sept. 10 2024) -Charles Lee, PhD, DSc, FACMG, has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) incoming class of 2024 Fellows, in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the field of human genetics. The RSC is the senior national body of distinguished Canadian scientists and scholars and the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence in Canada.

At The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, where he is Professor and the Robert Alvine Family Endowed Chair,Lee heads alabthat uses state-of-the-art technologies to study structural genomic variation and its contributions to human diseases and vertebrate genome evolution.

This prestigious designation is the Society's highest honor, presented to scholars in the arts, social sciences, humanities and sciences for their invaluable contributions to their fields. This year's class of 104 new Fellows were elected by their peers for their exceptional contributions in these fields. Lee is one of 51 Fellows elected to the Academy of Sciences this year.

"I am overjoyed to be chosen as a Royal Society of Canada Fellow," said Lee. "The scientific accomplishments we have been able to achieve in my lab were possible only because of the collaboration and research support from many institutions, including the University of Alberta and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. I am inspired by this year's class of Fellows and honored to be counted among them."

Lee is known for his discoveries in human genetics, including a landmark 2004 paper that detected widespread structural changes within the genome, which transformed the understanding of disease mechanisms and human evolution. Most recently, Lee's laboratory completed the very first complete genetic sequencing of human Y chromosomes. Lee has written more than 190 publications which have collectively been cited more than 100,000 times.

Lee grew up in High Prairie, Alberta, Canada and subsequently studied at the University of Alberta. In 2013, he joined JAX from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Throughout his career, he has received numerous accolades and awards for his research into the human genome, including the 2008 Ho-Am Prize in Medicine and was a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate in 2012. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. He previously served as the president of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) from 2017-2023and received an honorary doctorate of science from the University of Alberta, his alma mater, earlier this year.

Founded in 1882, the Royal Society of Canada is an independent scientific academy of the U.K. and the Commonwealth. Its Fellows have included many of the world's most eminent scientists including Sir Sandford Fleming - the originator of the worldwide standard time zones - Joseph Burr Tyrrell - a Canadian geologist who discovered a new dinosaur species in the Alberta Badlands - and John Lighton Synge - who introduced a new geometric approach to the theory of relativity and helped establish the Fields Medal.

The new Fellows will be inducted into the Society during a ceremony on November 8, 2024, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

About The Jackson Laboratory

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution with a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center and more than 3,000 employees in locations across the United States, Japan and China. Its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and to empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health. For more information, please visit www.jax.org.

About the Royal Society of Canada

Founded in 1882, the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) comprises The Academy of Arts and Humanities, The Academy of Social Sciences, The Academy of Science, and The RSC College. The RSC recognizes excellence, advises the government and the larger society, and promotes a culture of knowledge and innovation in Canada and with other national academies around the world. Learn more at www.rsc-src.ca.

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